Accepting the new "Normal" (By: Marissa Scott)
On January 2nd, I arrived at my office with a coffee in hand and a box of beautiful assorted muffins for my amazing team of music and art therapists. Not only do they work really hard, but each and everyone of them LOVES what they do, which is helping people, young and old.
I was excited for this two hour meeting that we all had pinned on our Google calendars since November. In my other hand, was a projector, and my laptop with a presentation to showcase just how amazing the last 9 years have been.
After showing them where we’ve been, everyone was fired up to start looking at where we were going! We immediately started brainstorming our dreams and goals for the future and I could feel excitement building to spring into action on implementing all of our ideas. I left that meeting with a grand sense of accomplishment, gratitude for my team, and a head full of BIG PLANS. I mean, how could I know that the next thing on my presentation timeline was going to be a giant black hole called COVID-19 that would suck all of those plans and ideas in and leave us scratching our heads on where to go and what to do next.
Today is May 14th. Today we were supposed to be holding our 2nd annual Spring Festival with our clients and families. If you missed last year's, our spring festival was a beautiful circle of sharing our arts among friends. It seems appropriate to be sharing my feelings with you given this important date.
It took me a long time to “let go” of the plans I had for this year and I’ll admit, I’m still kind of grappling with it! It’s a work in progress.
I’ve literally been moving through the stages of grief and I KNOW that I’m not alone. I know that YOU are doing this exact thing too. I want you to know that none of those feelings are silly. Every single one of them is real and warranted. Yes, I know, people are very sick and our nurses and doctors are on the front lines putting themselves at risk every single day and I’m over here feeling sad about missing a song circle. We feel what we feel, and big or small, those feelings are real and they shouldn’t bring you guilt. Did you hear me? Good. Back to the stages of grief.
Denial was brought to me by my shock and disbelief that we were going to need to temporarily close the center. At the start, I told myself things like “no, they won’t close the schools,” and “no that facility won’t suspend our contract.” Even as those things were happening, I told myself, “this is only temporary.” Even just three weeks ago, I was thinking, we’ll be back up and running like “normal” by June. The truth is, I don’t know when we’ll be back “up and running like normal.”
I frequently moved in and out of the anger stage, and let me tell you, anger takes various shapes and sizes and is one of the most difficult and challenging emotions to feel. Did you know music can really help with that?
Bargaining. For me as a business owner, I feel like bargaining has been taking shape mostly in the form of “if onlys” and guilt. As a mom, I’ve been thrust, like many of you, into the world of "schooling” my children. I now wear a kindergarten hat, a 2nd grade hat, and an IT hat, because let’s face it - remote meetings come with loads of technical difficulties. I’m also finding myself wearing my therapist hat at home more than ever... Managing the emotions of my children in the time of a pandemic. Emotions are running high and even the littlest one, baby Cooper, can feel it and he’s just barely 15 months old. So, I moved through this stage saying things like, “if only I had accomplished more this week,” or “if only I didn’t have to help my kids with school, I could be focusing on Sonatina” and “how we can get back to ‘normal.’” Cue the immense guilt. Guilt that I’m not doing enough for my kids, guilt that I’m not doing enough for my employees, guilt that I need to be focused on the practice. “What’s wrong with me, I’m a therapist! I should be able to manage everyone’s emotions during this crisis, including my own! Why can’t I just be productive today!” Well look, now we’ve moved back into the anger stage.
There have of course been days of complete gray blobs. Enter Depression with a capital D. Days where I’ve chosen to look the other way and not think about the practice, or anything above the bare survival needs of my kids like food and water and sleep, and instead I’ve found a distraction from all of it in Netflix or Disney+, or my bed. Then it’s right back to that bargaining stage and I’m up, running around trying to be “productive” in a completely unstructured environment which again leads me back to the stage of anger.
Why am I sharing all of this with you? Well because it’s important to me that you know one thing. Our mental health status fluctuates every day, for every person, pandemic or no pandemic. Here’s the thing. The term “mental health” does not need to be a big, heavy, load of negative bricks for you to carry. Tending to your mental health status is important, every day, whether you feel well or not your greatest. It should never be ignored or considered with any kind of negativity so let’s just smash the stigma around the term mental health right here and now. And another thing, you are not alone in this, and I want you to see that because as humans we don’t do well with isolation, especially when we isolate ourselves because of our “mental health” status out of fear of what others might or might not think about it.
I am moving into acceptance. I accept that this is hard. I accept that I am sad we aren’t having our Spring Festival today. I accept that I may feel angry and that letting go of the plans I had for 2020 is a challenge. I can accept that while I can’t be with you all for our festival, I can hug my children, take them by their little hands and create my own song circle. I’m going to accept myself and let go of the guilt that I’m not being “productive” and instead embrace all of my big feelings, the good ones and the bad ones. I can accept that self-care is how we survive.
Be gentle to yourself and when in doubt, create your own song circle. We will for sure get through this difficult time together, even if it’s from a distance.
Accepting the New “Normal”